The speaker is lost in darkness, and everything arrives as sound. There is the rustle of paper, a steady ticking, voices that seem muffled "as though through ash," and someone weeping far off. Nothing can be seen, so the world feels fragile and half real, like something heard through a wall.
Then comes a break. The speaker cries out and, in doing so, realizes they are alive and afraid. The cry is in "a tongue I do not know," which suggests confusion, perhaps a place or situation that feels foreign. The lurch, rumble, sudden silence and quick steps could point to a vehicle or some jolting movement, though the poem never says. It ends with the speaker "rocking / above the ground," carried along without control. The mood is anxious and eerie: dreamlike, uncertain, and tense, with fear as the one clear thing in a blur of noise.